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As a hub for building new businesses based on innovation, it would be surprising if Silicon Valley didn’t have its own goal-setting model: OKR (Objectives and Key Results).

And it not only exists—one of its main “users” is none other than Google, which started using the methodology in 1999, less than a year after the company was founded.

If you’re not familiar with it, OKR is a goal-setting methodology widely used by Silicon Valley startups, and its adoption has increasingly spread to innovative businesses around the world. In OKRs, goal alignment is dynamic and reviewed every quarter.

How the OKR methodology works

You know that time you decided you’d wake up earlier the next morning to buy fresh bread? You have an objective—wake up early—to reach a goal—get warm bread.

According to the creators of the OKR methodology, the only thing missing for that purchase to fit into their framework is information about what would measure the result. That would be possible if the structure for your task were:

I will __ measured by __.

In the startup world, your “I will” list must always be followed by someone or something that validates execution. That’s why OKRs are based on the objective (what you want to achieve) and a set of key results, which show whether you are—or aren’t—close to hitting the goal.

While the objective is qualitative and motivating, the key result is quantitative and rigorous, including targets that demonstrate progress along the way.

Who uses OKRs in Silicon Valley?

Well, we mentioned above that Google is one of the main beneficiaries of OKRs. Knowing objectives, goals, and metrics for each step taken is what allowed the company to grow sustainably over the years.

When it first implemented OKRs, Google had 40 people. Today, the tech giant’s workforce exceeds 60,000—and they still use OKRs. That proves the methodology can work for companies of any size, including brand-new startups.

The key, of course, is knowing your objectives and how your startup intends to reach them in regular time intervals. Goal-setting must always be aligned with the company’s reality and everything it still wants to accomplish.

But this article is about how the methodology is used in Silicon Valley—not only at Google, right?

So here are other innovation names that also use OKRs to improve goal achievement and drive sustainable growth: Twitter, LinkedIn, Dropbox, GoPro, Coursera, and Eventbrite.

In Brazil, brands that openly use OKRs to improve their indicators include Nubank, Locaweb, ContaAzul, Moip, and VivaReal.

How OKRs can help your startup

Seeing companies that prospered under OKRs gives a good perspective that it can work. But how do you implement this solution in your startup, which isn’t yet as large as the ones mentioned here?

The main OKR benefit for your startup is centralizing objectives and goals in a way that makes planning each one more concrete—which is extremely hard when, besides dealing with team frameworks, you also need to grow your business model sustainably.

That’s why implementing OKRs can make your team more focused and organized while pursuing the company’s main objectives.

More than that: OKRs can help you define, once and for all, what your startup’s priorities are. Each goal can be measured by an indicator, making it easier to track step-by-step growth for an innovative business.

Even if it’s outside Silicon Valley.